


A Change of Heart in Two Acts

by ineedsomecyanide



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: "old fool" as a term of endearment, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arguing, Character Study, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Internal Monologue, Javert Lives, Javert foresees things, Javert's mind isn't the cheeriest of places, M/M, On The Barricade, POV Alternating, Post-Seine, Religious Discussion, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-10-19 08:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20654156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineedsomecyanide/pseuds/ineedsomecyanide
Summary: "You’re everything that’s left", Javert would want to say, "You can’t be what I need", but his voice won’t leave his throat.Your classic Post-Seine scenario, now in vignettes.





	1. Act I: Badly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hamstermoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/gifts).

> Based on the prompt: "Another thing that got me pondering - another German Javert (I have a few too many of these!) said something about having an epiphany - when released at the barricade suddenly having to see Valjean not as a convict or a thief but as a man / human. Bonus if you can get Valjean's lines from the show in - the translation is roughly, "you're wrong and have been all your life, I'm only human like anyone else." Extra bonus - that this Javert has a sense of humour and sad self-depreciating half smile that shows his pain."
> 
> I just want to deeply apologize, because this is probably not what you wanted, but this prompt got out of hand. Consider the first chapter as the fill for your prompt, and the second one as a bonus. This is a mishmash of musical and novel, as usual.
> 
> P.s.: Quarry, I wish you a speed recovery!

** ** _ I. It moves and it staggers _

Javert has had a recurring dream lately. He is not a superstitious person, so he has blamed the little sleep he manages to get these days. There are possible rioters agitating in the streets, and someone has to keep an eye on them, even by sacrificing his own slumber. His mother had always tried to warn him against bad omens, but he did not believe in them. One (his subordinate officers, probably) could say that he dives into bad omens, head first. The fact that he can foresee when a gun will misfire is tied more to his skills and his ability to see details and signals than to good and bad auspices, of that he’s sure. 

He dreams of a bridge, a bridge that his mind had made up, taking pieces of all the bridges he has seen in Paris (perhaps even in Montreuil, even in his childhood in the South) and shoving them together. He’s running, feeling a despair he can’t really find a reason for, he only knows he has to reach that bridge. But when he finally crosses the bridge, it trembles and collapses. It’s at this point that he usually wakes up.

**___ **

** ** _ II. Before it fell __to the ground, I already knew it was breaking_ ** **

“Who the devil brings his own identification to a barricade? To spy on us, too!” 

He’s been hit, searched, and bound. The insurgents have found his identification papers, of course, kept safe under glass, and tied him up to a post, inside the café. The ropes are uncomfortable, but he’s calm. They threaten to shoot him when the barricade will fall. Good. He will die on duty. It is dignified. Just. It is everything he ever wanted. 

Again. Again, one of those bad omens, like the dream, like the prickling feeling he always gets when he just _knows _that a gun will misfire. 

“Your revolution is going to fail”, he says, almost sneering, to no-one in particular. 

The blond leader, the one with features so delicate one (probably Javert’s subordinates again, that incompetent bunch) could almost mistake for a girl – but there’s nothing virginal about him, just a severe and terrible stillness – is not taken aback by his statement. The revolution is a calculated risk. 

“If so, you’re going down with us”, he scoffs, keeping him at gunpoint. 

Javert knows. It is dignified. Just. 

**___**

_ III. The little broken glass, I __felt how it creaked _

Of course, Valjean is there. With more lines on his face, more white in his hair. He seems to be present at every pivotal moment in Javert’s life. Javert wishes he was more surprised, but at this point, he is not. Always there, always running, always circling each other. 

There had been gunshots, and then Valjean had appeared on the doorway of the tavern. Now he’s confabulating with the rioters’ leader, who’s thanking him profusely; Valjean is most likely asking permission to blow his brains off. 

Here he goes, he hauls him off of the ground. He’s almost getting used to it. 

“What are you doing here, Valjean? Oh, a knife. It suits you well. Take your revenge, it’s fair”. _I deserve it. __I saw this coming. Don’t be afraid, I'__m not scared, I __won’t suffer. It is dignified. Just. __We’ve __always __running after __each other__; __this is the rightful ending. End me or our __deadly dance won’t __ever end. It is what you want, __isn’t it__? _

“Hush. You talk too much. Your life is safe in my hands”. 

He lowers the knife, but, to Javert’s surprise, there is no sharp pain, but just ropes falling limp to the ground. 

“What-. Oh. Oh, I see. You want a deal. Once a thief, always a thief, eh? I won’t fall for your tricks...” Javert smirks. It’s a painful one. 

“Hush, I said. You're wrong and have been all your life, I'm only human like anyone else”. 

Something has fallen in Javert’s perfectly oiled brain gears and has stopped them. A pebble called pity. No, no, not pity. _ Compassion. _

Valjean is murmuring something about his address, but Javert feels like he’s underwater. _ Like he had fallen from that thrice-damned bridge in his dreams... _

“Go! Run away!” he says, while firing a pistol Javert has not noticed before. He’s really starting to lose it... 

While he stumbles away, stunned, the realisation dawns on him. Or, more appropriately, hits him. It hits him like that time in Toulon when someone had swung a bucket towards him (and his chest), and he couldn’t breathe for a moment afterwards. It hits him that Valjean is a _man_, like everyone else. Not exceptionally good. Not exceptionally bad. Just there. Trying to survive. The second thought is that everyone he has loathed in the past years – those were mere men and women too. Just there. Trying to survive. Like _himself_. This is his third thought, that he isn’t the reckless, spotless machine of cold justice he aspired to be and thought of himself in his best moments; he is just a _man _himself. Just there. Trying to survive. 

His thoughts are too much to bear, so he has to brace himself to a nearby wall, feeling his knees giving way. No. He has to get somewhere safe, before listening to the turmoil in his head. 

**___**

_ IV. The night has become strange, the stars and the moon have come out _

He runs home in the haze of a dream, the city of Paris looking dreamy itself, with its streets almost empty, and the muffled sound of gunshots, in the distance. 

He hastily changes into his uniform again, to reassure himself that everything is still like it was before he left for the barricade. But it isn’t. His uniform does not mean anything for him anymore. How many _people_ did he wrongfully convict? All of them? No, no, it’s impossible. Most of them undoubtedly deserved it. But did Valjean? And, besides the years spent in the _bagne, _did he deserve all of his hatred? The vicious words he shouted at him when he discovered that monsieur Madeleine had always been, in fact, Jean Valjean? The despicable thoughts he had about him, almost constantly? Those thoughts, that sometimes meddled with something darker, that made his stomach churn and his groin tighter. He did not dare to give them a name, it was improper to feel such things for a convict, and they would never be realised, so why bother? 

Well! Well! _The past is in the past_, he thinks, while his shaky hands are trying to tie his hair up in a somewhat neater queue (they fail). His fingers brush the cut on his forehead. He has to think about what he could do in this moment. Find Valjean. Find him, yes. What if... what if he’s dead? What if the National Guard’s bullets didn’t spare him? Then he would be free of his debt, but, for some reason, this thought only increases his despair. No, he can’t be dead; _he’d felt it _if he was. He has to find him. 

. 

What’s left of the barricade is a bloody wreck. Corpses piled on other corpses everywhere, and his frantic state of mind is making him search them all, even if he knows that Valjean is not there, _just in case... _

After a recognition of the place, it seems that the sewers are the only possible safe escape. He knows where they end. He will wait for Valjean there. 

. 

In the end, helping Valjean bring that corpse to their kin and writing that letter to the Préfet were the only things he felt he could do, although it’s too late for redemption now. He had nothing to lose.   
He wanders the streets around Valjean’s house. That impossible man was so sure he was going to be arrested, couldn’t he see what he had did to him? Did he know what he did when he set him free? Javert laughs, but it’s a mirthless laugh, painful and bitter. Tears are streaming down his face. He pays no attention to them. If there’s a God above, He has a quite peculiar sense of humour. 

Well, he’s on a bridge, now. He should fulfil the prophecy. It’s only fair. 

**___**

_ V. I won’t waste a minute thinking about you (protect me, save me) _

He did not know what was in store for him after the bridge, he had not dreamed it. Darkness, probably. Cold. Quiet. Surely not a pair of strong arms dragging him out of the peaceful, if deadly, embrace of the Seine. He can feel the water rising, and he could have sworn he caught a glimpse of Valjean’s face. He hopes it is his last dream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Terry Pratchett once wrote, "he could think in italics".


	2. Act II: No-one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's worth noting that nothing in this fic is original; let's think of it as a love letter to all the magnificent Post-Seine fics I've read through the years.

_ I. I have no__-one __left but you _

Saying that the last months been angry would probably be an understatement. The bed-ridden Javert sometimes completely forgets his condition to manhandle or even throw things at Valjean. There’s a deep anger that consumes him, born from the belief that he should’ve died that night, and that Valjean shouldn’t have intervened. Instead, he saved him twice. Javert could never repay him in any way possible. And so, he curses him to Hell and back, or he laughs that mournful laugh that is the attitude that upsets Valjean the most. During other, quieter days, he falls into an unresponsive silence, and it is impossible to get something more than a grunt or a scoff out of him. 

Then, one night, when the fever has cooled off and the air outside is getting harsher at every nightfall, and Valjean is fearing that he is falling into one of his silent periods again, they finally speak. They aren’t facing each other: Javert is laying in bed, and will sometimes close his eyes to avoid Valjean’s, always full of compassion and humanity and pity and gentleness, sometimes they’re too much to bear. Valjean, who is seated in his usual chair, by the bed and gazes sometimes at Javert, sometimes at the full moon outside the window. 

“Why did you save me, Valjean? My debt towards you was big enough already. Why, why did you do it, why? I deserved to die that night. By your hand, by my hand, doesn’t matter. It was the rightful order of things, and you disrupted it, like you disrupt everything! Are you a saint? Are you a convict? I don’t know anymore! This is what you’ve done to me!” 

Valjean lets him speak freely; he wonders briefly if the fever could be back, but Javert’s thoughts are too articulate, different from the deliriums of the first days. He looks at Javert: there are tears streaming down his face. The impulse to draw him in his arms is too strong, it’s what Javert needs, hell be damned if he gets violently rejected like he almost expects. 

But Javert is uncharacteristically scared and docile tonight; he looks smaller and younger, and he abandons himself in the warmth of Valjean’s arms. 

“No-one deserves to die, Javert. You’re just starting to acknowledge your mistakes. It’s a good thing”, he whispers.

_ You’re everything that’s left__, _Javert would want to say, _You can’t be what I need_, but his voice won’t leave his throat. 

___

_ II. Give me children and truth_

With a new life, comes the anxiety of the unknown; especially for Javert, who never saw anything of this in his dreams, nor he felt it somehow. 

They have talked and talked and argued and sometimes came to a solution, but there are still particular topics they tiptoe around or avoid altogether. Toulon, for both of them; certain strings of numbers, their childhoods, bridges and rivers, Cosette. 

But there are certain truths they have to face. Javert had learned, with a certain disbelief, from Valjean's half-said half-whispered sentences, full of shame, that he intended to abandon Cosette once she got married. Of course, he did not use the word “abandon”, but he was talking about how the girl wouldn’t need him anymore after the wedding. “She has Marius now. She doesn’t need an old man like me anymore” Valjean whispered. 

Javert knows little of filial bonds, but, for the few times he’d been around Cosette and her father (“You can’t deny being her father, Valjean – you raised her, clothed her, fed her, loved her”) he could feel the strong bond between them, and how they are happy in each other company. His police training is to blame, not his (still non-existent) knowledge of the human heart, but he managed to notice nonetheless. It is simply madness to abruptly cut a bond like that. 

“You’re really an old fool, Valjean. You obviously care for each other, why would you do a thing like that? It will destroy you, Valjean, and, no, don’t tell me you deserve it. That night... you said to me that no-one deserves to die. To me, the man who harrowed you your entire life. If I don’t deserve to die, you most certainly don’t too. You are a good man, Valjean.” _You’re the best man I’ve ever known. _“ You can’t let this thing destroy you.” _I’d miss you too much _. 

Embraces wetted by tears are becoming a common occurrence in that house in Rue Plumet. 

. 

There are embraces and tears even when Javert rectifies a half-truth, shared by Valjean some time before, and to only one of the interested parties. 

Javert is furious when he learns that Valjean, in his ongoing process of self-martyrisation, had omitted some crucial details in the report of his life, report that he had given only to Marius. “Don’t you think that your daughter has the right to know as well, you old fool?”. He storms out to the Pontmercy household (well, technically still Gillenormand) with Valjean in tow, and he discloses all the truth to Marius and especially Cosette. He isn’t soft on himself, or on all the mistakes he made, on how many people he misjudged, but he doesn’t fail to recount each and every good deed he saw Valjean (père Madeleine, Monsieur le Maire, Ultime Fauchelevent) performing. By the end, the young spouses are both in tears, and Cosette won’t leave Valjean’s side. Javert can hear her murmur “of course I still love you, Papa” and there’s a strange wetness welling in his eyes. 

___

_ III. Give me tenderness and dignity_   


The third truth both Valjean and Javert have to face is their undoubtable attraction to each other. 

Javert has found out that Valjean _likes to touch_. If he can, his fingers are always brushing some part of Javert: the hollow of one his arms, his legs, his back, sometimes even his cheeks or his hands. Javert can only think that this gives Valjean comfort, after a lifetime of loneliness. He himself is surely comforted by Valjean’s little touches, despite being much shier than his companion in reciprocating: brushing Valjean’s legs while they are sitting together, by the fire, reading, or a pat on his back. Javert won’t admit to himself that he wants to thread his fingers in Valjean’s white curls. 

Their first kiss is nothing more than a soft peck, a sleepy brush of lips on lips, that Valjean lays on Javert’s mouth after they wake up from falling asleep, tangled together, before the fireplace. It feels more like a dream than anything, and Valjean pulls back quickly, too quickly, blushing furiously. Javert just gives him an interrogative look, still half-asleep.   
“I’ve come... I’ve come to care very much about you, Javert. But if you don’t... reciprocate... I’d like to still cherish your friendsh-”   
“And I’m the one who talks too much!” Javert cuts him off, reaching for his lips again. He's never been good with feelings, and he hopes that this will suffice for Valjean. 

It does. Nothing changes much after that night; Valjean still touches him wherever and whenever he can, and Javert gets a little less shy in initiating said touches. He can always count on warm arms to nestle into when his police work has been too rough (and after that night on the bridge and many discussions with Valjean, it doesn’t happen rarely), someone sleeping next to him (who complains about stolen covers the morning after), and a pair of hands to help him fasten his waistcoat or coat (asking a kiss as reward). Valjean will even try to hold his hand when they’re walking in public, Javert at first will blush and protest, “It’s not proper”, but then he’ll accept. 

One day Valjean is in his shirtsleeves, leaning on the windowsill, basking in the late afternoon light; the seasons have turned, and turned, and another spring is upon them. Javert can see Valjean’s frame through the shirt, turned sheer by the light. Before he can stop himself, he has his arms around his waist; before they both know, they are kissing breathlessly against one of the kitchen walls.   
They are undoubtedly both aroused.   
“Upstairs?”   
“I’ve never...”   
“Neither did I. We’ll learn together”.

___ 

_ IV. Give me oral sex and holiness _

Javert doesn’t know if he’s a religious man. He never attended churches much – before the river, at least. Nowadays, he sometimes visits with Valjean, but he will never admit that he does it for Valjean’s company – he'd follow him to the end of the world – and not for the place. He admires Valjean’s pure and innocent faith, as he admires everything in that impossible man, with the knowledge that he will never be pure of heart enough to replicate that faith. There will always be a bit of a sceptical, and of an avenging angel, in him. 

But when Valjean goes down on him, his last thoughts before ecstasy are thanks to that God he’s not sure he believes in. Valjean would probably call it blasphemy, or, worse, smile that smile full of tenderness, that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle (different, oh so different from Madeleine’s fake half-smiles) and say that he’s right to thank God for having given him a companion, to share such things with. That _such things _aren’t vile, when done with love. Valjean would call it love. He’s like a sinless snake, looking so tempting, yet so honest and good, that you can’t blame him for anything. This continues to drive Javert crazy, but he’s learned to keep the ghosts in his mind at bay, the destructive impulses in him have calmed thanks to Valjean’s affection. 

Javert still doesn’t dare to give those feelings he has a name; he never did. For now he’s content with sharing a home and a bed with Valjean, bickering on useless things, reading, attempting to garden, debating morals and sleeping in his arms. Safe, at least. 

___

_ V. I've never loved anyone like I love you _

It’s early in the morning, but the summer sunlight is already seeping through the curtains. Valjean is still sleeping, curled on his side, facing him. Javert's first thought is that he looks angelic, but, no, he does not. He looks like a man. The best of men, but still one of them. Or, a very grounded and broad-shouldered angel, who gets dirt under his fingernails regularly, if such an angel exists. 

Javert can’t help himself, in this new world of _ touch _ he discovered – they discovered together – to reach for Valjean’s cheek and lightly stroke it. Of course, Valjean wakes up, but there’s only tenderness in his eyes, and he leans into Javert’s touch, kissing his palm. “Good morning”, he says with a sleepy smile. 

It’s still a bit too early for words, for Javert, so he draws Valjean closer, to be able to kiss his nose, his cheeks, his lips, his neck. Javert has never known so much happiness, his mind is racing, his heart may burst, he could die here and now and be completely at peace with that. 

_ I love you, I love you, I love you. _His murmur is muffled by Valjean’s body, and the pillows, and the sheets, but he hopes he’s heard him nonetheless. 

“What did you say?” Great. Perfect. 

Javert pulls back, and just smiles and shakes his head. He’s been discovered, he can’t say that again. Why is he feeling like a timid young girl confessing her feelings to her beau, and why is he blushing under Valjean’s gaze like one? 

“Alright. Don’t tell me anything.” Valjean’s smile only broadens, and then he nestles himself against Javert. 

“I love you too”, he whispers in his ear. 


End file.
